Court documents say defendants didn’t commit crime in paying out Honolulu police chief to retire
By Diane Ako
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HONOLULU (KITV) — There’s been a huge break in the federal criminal case concerning the Honolulu Police Commission’s payout of then-police chief Louis Kealoha.
Court documents reveal the city’s lawyer says Donna Leong, Max Sword, and Roy Amemiya are not guilty. Those documents were filed Wednesday.
Thursday in court, lawyers for the defendants asked the judge to dismiss the case. They were denied. But a legal expert says this is a key document that could change things.
Leong went into court Thursday morning, hopeful a judge would dismiss her case. She and co-defendants Max Sword and Roy Amemiya face federal fraud charges, accused of breaking city rules to pay out Chief Kealoha, while Kealoha was under investigation for corruption. That didn’t happen, but this did: a 22-page declaration by the city’s corporation counsel, Robert Kohn.
Defense attorney Megan Kau, not associated with this case, analyzed it for us as a legal expert.
“The declaration itself seems to exonerate all three defendants. The information contained here within is shocking to me as a lawyer…[because] a prior investigation was done by the US government. The US government reviewed all the evidence and decided these charges were not worth pursuing and therefore closed the case,” Kau said.
“Subsequent to dismissing the case, two US assistant attorneys who were not associated with the initial investigation chose to re-initiate the investigation and charge the defendants, notwithstanding the fact that the case had been dismissed by the two prior US assistant attorneys,” she added.
Kau said the declaration notes included interviews of other deputy corporation counsels, other witnesses, statutes, case law, emails, and evidence that show these three defendants are probably not guilty of the charges.
“That’s shocking. As a former deputy prosecuting attorney and a current defense attorney, that’s shocking to me,” she said.
Kau says this is probably the strongest declaration she’s ever seen written by a lawyer.
“It’s very significant this lawyer is telling the judge, ‘We have exculpatory evidence that will show these three people are not guilty of the crime they are alleged to have committed and we can provide you that evidence if you want us to,'” she said.
Lawyers for the defendants told KITV4 they couldn’t comment on the ongoing litigation, but Kau expects this document will strongly impact the case.
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